Reminiscence of My Special Place
by idmarryhoss
Summary: Story of the special voice of a special narrative, to have a look upon the Cartwrights and explaining the background in coming together with them. With the touch of a fairy-tale, reached over the ocean.


**Reminiscence of My Special Place**

by idmarryhoss

_notes on the story:_  
><em>This story was written as a turnside to few longer stories I wrote. Myself, I think it as a key, as a special feature, as a trailer, or a codex that helps to unravel the spirit of the longer stories. Or vice versa, condense the message of the long story into a thousand words.<em>

**Summary:**

A short vignette upon the principles of finding the suitable romantic lead, trying to avoid too big magnitudes of syrup involved. A thought of how it would feel to marry into the Cartwright clan. Feedback welcome in all its spectrum, reviews with an endearing reception!  
>. . . . . . . . . .<p>

**Reminiscence of My Special Place**

When did it start, and how?

I had felt it in the morning in my spine. The little _fjärril..._ a... butterfly in my stomach. The wind was changing, and I smiled at it in the rising sun and raised my nose cockily to the horizon. The way the breeze tickled my hair that escaped the braid, I knew it was the same breeze that had seen something further away.

Curious; I admit, I was.

There were also some things that I only _knew_; some things I learned beside, some things I heard, but for the untouchable, unreasonable, unexplainable... I had always been sensitive towards it.

When he rode in, I saw so many layers of him that for a moment the world was made of mirrors and glass. And I saw to the other side; I straightened my back and wiped my hands in the apron to be ready to shake his hand when he offered it.

He had surfaces that other people were not able to see, or maybe they had no ability to interpret. I was not born to this language or this culture; thus I had to look beyond to see what people were and what they meant. What my eyes caught that day was an image of a man, more than his earthly shelter.

I had my foreign accent and the lack of words, but he understood the smile, the laughter and the look of the eyes, when the fingertips were too intruding to make acquaintance just yet. Still today, I don't speak to him all that I have to say. I put his hands where they feel good, and he is not afraid to explore, anymore.

He was so much. I wanted to put my hands over him and take his body in my arms, just to discover I couldn't hold him all. I knew I had very little to give; but when I saw him, I wanted to become – for him – _everything_. And I did my best. I knew how difficult it is to be easy to love but yet hard to reach. How love once felt could wound with loss.

I wanted to give him many, many children, so that all that he was would not be gone after our generation. Because he was so different: he grew up being told he did not fit; he had to hold back with his temper; restrict his soul that told him to wander away to the nature... while his heart was buried deep in the soil that carried their spread. I knew that feeling and I could share. I had learnt to laugh at it and tame the remorse involved in it, and with me he slowly forgot his shame, too.

His confidence was the kind of confidence that was hidden, and sometimes people viewed him as shy, as childish, as a slow man of little thought. Who knows, how it came so? Was he so big to avoid, so strong to not agitate, so open to everybody to read, that life taught him to cover what he was and act humble when his strength wasn't needed to show?

I wasn't afraid to be confident with him. My confidence can hurt; I do not speak the way others do, so I know how to see under the words what people are. The family he brought me into made me proud, because they were straight and sound and spoke only with honesty. I stopped being afraid of my tongue and straightened my backbone in front of them.

So many good men with so much integrity. It meant gaining two brothers, one the sweet prince of the fairytales smooth with his manner, the other a casket of emotion and flooding words locked behind an elegant mask. A father who weighed me in his eyes and offered his hand to shake, when he saw I was fit.

I was proud to be introduced to them, and worked hard to earn their pride, too. I taught my children from my first marriage to respect this principle, with the good mentors my new husband's family offered for them.

My history was able to compensate what he in his life had lost. My family and my stories filled his imagination of tales of his own kin, in some ways distant to his lost mother, but in other ways so dear to him to give even this little piece. He imagined his mother in me, before he saw how parts of him were from my world, too, and finally he saw me as me.

He saw the beauty of the rough land outside of him, the simple gift of pounding life around him. My children, who had driven so many other people away, didn't make him flinch. He scratched the dog and made our sheep grin. He looked at my little shack for a house and saw the love nailed down with every log, instead of the drafty windows and the once-white curtains that had turned yellow and striped when they hung for so many years under the sun. He wasn't turned away from the shallow fear of my foreign tongue, neither from the wild behavior of my young ones. He touched the wrinkles at the corners of my eyes and liked them. I wasn't afraid to smile more.

Some tongues will speak he is a rich man. Rich is not given for the kind I am, say some. That I made a good deal in marrying him and I climbed the ladders of society so easily. Even, when to my disbelief, he had been turned down by others of his kind. Maybe I was, a gold digger; he owns land, and forests, mines, and businesses; but I gave myself to his hands for him, not for his fortune. I refuse to not belong. I do belong. I gave myself to him much more honestly than any of those who turned him down did, and I cherished it all, not his fortune or his land or his family, but him. And he belongs.

Of course it is true my life is less counting and more idle time now, with him. But so much came also that was not calculated. A business gone wrong. A bank whose dollars became worthless. A sudden vein of silver giving awesome riches to them. A dry year following a voluptuous one. A baby who was never born but came out before I could give it to him as it should be.

When I see him coming home, he still covers the whole doorway and I hear his roaring laughter bellowing, as if it all started from his toes and resonated through his body, conquering the whole space that my rooms and my kitchen cover.

There's a place for my head to lay under his chin, over the chest where my cheek lies comfortably and my fingers play with the hair. I was welcome there on the day we married, and I still am. The words between us changed, the feel of his hands changed, the face of our marriage changed, and they still do. But that place is unconditionally mine.

He's a good man, a kind man. A man whose patience surrounds my flames so securely I'm not afraid to flare anymore. I hold to my treasure hard and breathe the scent of the outdoors life from him.

_Min kära._ Mon chérie.

I breathe again.

_Min Erik. _My Hoss.

_The vignette was a complementary short story to Borderland, where Hoss Cartwright befriends this mysterious Elin. But that story is long and different. _


End file.
